Competition Law

A pub landlady from Portsmouth has made important progress in her legal battle against the Premier League and its exclusive deals with Sky Sports and ESPN. Karen Murphy wants to be able to buy cheaper foreign decoder cards in order to screen matches on Saturdays in her pub.

The High Court sent the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for an opinion. The ECJ has ruled that the legislation preventing the sale or use of foreign decoder cards is contrary to the single market principle. (more…)

The High Court in London has to rule on whether National Grid can have access to confidential documents that were made by companies involved in a Europe-wide engineering cartel, which the company is accusing of costing it £235m in business.

The illegal engineering cartel ran from 1988 to 2004, and the companies involved were fined £675m by the European Competition Commission. (more…)

What is competition law? It is the law that monitors the behaviour of companies to ensure they do not engage in anti-competitive behaviour as this ultimately hurts the consumer. Anti-competitive behaviour includes price fixing or abusing market dominance. In addition, competition law prevents a company from becoming a monopoly by preventing mergers or takeovers if they mean the company would become too large.

Much of the law on competition in the UK comes from Europe. Our blog keeps you up-to-date with competition law news from the UK and Europe, and lets you know about any current and interesting investigations.